A storage network environment may comprise one or more storage clusters of storage controllers (e.g., nodes) configured to provide clients with access to user data stored within storage devices. For example, a first storage cluster may comprise a first storage controller configured to provide clients with access to user data stored within a first storage device. A second storage cluster may be configured according to a disaster recovery relationship with respect to the first storage cluster, such that user data (e.g., user files, applications, etc.) and configuration data (e.g., volume information, a replication policy, a network interface configuration, etc.) are replicated from the first storage cluster to the second storage cluster. In this way, when a disaster occurs at the first storage cluster and clients are unable to access user data within the first storage device because the first storage controller may be unavailable or may have failed from the disaster, a second storage controller of the second storage cluster may provide clients with failover client access to replicated user data that was replicated from the first storage device to a second storage device accessible to the second storage controller. When the first storage cluster recovers from the disaster, the second storage cluster may switch back to the first storage cluster such that the first storage controller provides clients with access to user data from the first storage device (e.g., the first storage device may be synchronized with any changes made to user data and/or configuration data within the second storage device during switchover operation by the second storage controller). In this way, user data and configuration data may be backed up between storage clusters for disaster recovery.
Because a client may be unable to access the replicated user data on the second storage cluster due to the disaster recovery relationship (e.g., client access to the second storage device may be restricted because the second storage device is a backup storage device for disaster recovery), the client may request a trust relationship between the first storage cluster and a third storage cluster where the trust relationship specifies that data from the first storage cluster can be mirrored to the third storage cluster for client backup and/or access by the client. In an example, the trust relationship may be established based upon storage administrators of the first storage cluster and the third storage cluster coming to an agreement regarding the mirroring of data (e.g., an agreement that a volume of a virtual storage machine of the first storage cluster can mirror data to a mirrored volume of a second virtual storage machine of the third storage cluster). Unfortunately, if the first storage cluster experiences a disaster and the second storage cluster takes over for the first storage cluster using a switchover operation, the trust relationship is broken and an interruption in mirroring of data to the third storage cluster will occur until a new trust relationship is manually established by the client between storage administrators of the second storage cluster and the third storage cluster (e.g., if the client is unaware of the broken trust relationship, then the client may inadvertently forgo setting up the new trust relationship, thus losing any mirroring of data to the third storage cluster).